


Imperfection

by majorbern



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-07
Updated: 2013-07-08
Packaged: 2017-12-18 00:08:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/873477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/majorbern/pseuds/majorbern
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sarah O'Brien's past comes back to haunt her, will she be able to protect the only truly blameless person in her life? Cora/O'Brien.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

_1890_

Sunlight streamed through the narrow window, casting a pallid rectangle on the floorboards. Dustmites danced in the early morning glow, incandescent in their fervor. The smell of perfume lingered in the upholstery, and she inhaled deeply, as if to breathe the atmosphere into her very bones. The scent mingled with that emanating from the half-drunk bottle on the dressing table, and, for the first time in her life, and during this, the briefest of moments, she almost felt beautiful. 

But beauty was and is a temporal thing. The only constant, in this life and in any other, was obligation, and so it was that, sighing, she peeled the sheets away from her body, and sat up, ushering in the inevitable headache. The sun passed behind a cloud as she brushed a resigned hand over her face, sweeping a stray hair back into place, and she was plain once more. A servant, that was all. Devoted. Inconsequential. Swinging her legs out from under her, she began to retrieve her hastily discarded clothing, silently cursing herself for not taking better care of the few things she was permitted to own. As she buttoned her ancient, sturdy blouse; pretty, in its way, but unremarkable; as she dressed up in the costume of her every day life, so she got into character, into the role she had been allotted in some divine idea of a joke. The farm girl, the servant, the rich man's crutch. A woman, yes, but never a lady.

She couldn't bring herself to be irritated by the ladder she found in her stocking; merely ran a finger along it, a faint echo of the previous evening's touch, and felt nothing but empty. Immune. Impenetrable. She crept to the door, but turned back as she did, allowing herself a final glance at the figure in the bed. Now here was a true thing of beauty. Raven hair spilling across the pillow; creamy skin spread evenly over impossible limbs that claimed more than their fair share of the mattress. Eyes, shut now, but, when opened, clear blue, and yet inscrutable, like lakes frozen over. The church bells chimed the hour, and she smiled, for she was not yet to know that she would come sorely to regret this moment, not today perhaps, and not tomorrow, either, but for the rest of her life, regardless.


	2. Fear

_1912_

Sarah O'Brien was afraid. It was not a feeling that she would have admitted to, and neither was she much acquainted with it, but it was there, nonetheless, lurking in the shadowy corners of the murkiest recesses of her mind. She was not what one might call a sympathetic woman; indeed, it might not have seemed far beyond the realm of imagination that she could have brought the entire vessel down singlehandedly, had it suited her, but on that fateful night, she dreamed of horrors untold. She did have a heart, contrary as it may have been to popular belief, and it beat rapidly out of time and in all the wrong places. There was darkness in her, that much was true; a certain venom that was wont to course through her veins, but that, surely, was true of all people, to varying degrees. They were, by nature, imperfect beings, never quite one thing or another, existing, as they did, in the perpetual purgatory of this blighted world. Her own demons may torment her, but they were nothing, she could tell, compared to what was to come, and she woke with a jolt at precisely twenty past two in the morning, unable to quell the sense of dread that descended and settled within her.

Morning came, and with it the news that the unsinkable ship had sunk, and all at once it did not surprise her and it shocked her to her very core. Bile rose in her throat, and "It's not just a tragedy," she found herself snapping, "it's a complication." And so it was, though the tragedy itself would have been quite enough to take, thank you. Inwardly, she went over and over the situation, but she might as well not have bothered, for all the good it did. There was nothing, as far as she could tell, to be done. For all her pretensions to deisticity, Lady Mary, with her painted on smiles and her sharply edged manners, would never get the inheritance that was owing to her now, and Lady Edith, a kinder girl, perhaps, but comparison, and yet she was soured, would suffer another crushing blow to her already blackening heart. Was spite in Edith's nature, she wondered, or was she just another spirit fragments, like cut glass shattered on flagged floor tiles? She ought not to care, she told herself, but she found she could not help it. It mattered to her what became of the Crawleys. What became of the Countess. But she could neither admit it nor change it, so instead she feigned indifference, which was a poor substitute for either.

A shadow fell across the bottom step, and, already sickened by gloom on this miserable day, she fixed the newcomer with an appraising glare, as if to see into his very soul. He did not quiver under her icy gaze; only met it, calmly, and explained his business. He was Bates, the new valet. The name had a bitter taste to it, like absinthe unfettered. She did not like him. She would have claimed, had anyone asked her, that it was out of loyalty to Thomas, but there was something else, too, something that made her stomach churn and set her teeth on edge.

"It's such a terrible thing, O'Brien," her lady sighed, as the maid attended her, and "Yes, Milady," she intoned, dutifully, as the Countess pressed a weary hand to her brow, in a rare moment of vulnerability, and, for once, she was not grand, or composed, or well-mannered, but merely, and beautifully, broken. Her grief was overpowering her, dragging her slowly, inexorably, below the surface, along with all those others, whose safety procedures had not been adhered to, whose life boats had not been filled, and now, whose new lives remained unlived, and would do until the end of time. Cora Crawley ought to have lived a charmed life, and she was good in the purest sense of the word, but goodness in its essence was not unsusceptible to suffer, and so it was that, from now on, her life would always be a little bit harder, the cross she bore a little bit heavier, perhaps until she breathed her last, and would finally relinquish her responsibilities to her far more jaded daughter. After a beat, she looked up, her eyes bright once more, her smile firmly back in place, though it wobbled, almost imperceptibly, and Sarah wanted to take her in her arms, but she did not, for she was a servant, and servants did what they were told, and not what they wanted to do.

And so she carried on with her duties, as best she could, and the weeks turned into months, and her fear did not subside. Bates remained, despite all her schemes and contrivances, and "Does anyone else keep dreaming about the Titanic?" the kitchen maid asked, and she scoffed, though night after night she tossed and turned, haunted by the ghosts of all those poor souls lost at sea.


End file.
